The Starry Sky Above and the Moral Life Within

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End of Watch (2012)

“I am the police, and I’m here to arrest you. You’ve broken the law. I did not write the law. I may disagree with the law but I will enforce it. No matter how you plead, cajole, beg or attempt to stir my sympathy. Nothing you do will stop me from placing you in a steel cage with gray bars. If you run away I will chase you. If you fight me I will fight back. If you shoot at me I will shoot back. By law I am unable to walk away. I am a consequence. I am the unpaid bill. I am fate with a badge and a gun. Behind my badge is a heart like yours. I bleed, I think, I love, and yes I can be killed. And although I am but one man, I have thousands of brothers and sisters who are the same as me. They will lay down their lives for me and I them. We stand watch together. The thin-blue-line, protecting the prey from the predators, the good from the bad. We are the police.”

End of Watch is probably my favorite movie released this year. I would describe it as a real, true to life movie version of the television series Cops. I typically view law enforcement officials as members of just another large group of armed “gangsters,” working under a pretense of “justice,” deluded into enforcing unjust laws and believing that they are somehow superior to the “criminals” they incarcerate, and also responsible for quite literally holding me prisoner and stealing my car. But, alas, they are a necessary evil if we wish to live civilized lives. However, the two police officers depicted in this movie managed to gain my respect as individuals, which, by that fact alone is a testimony to it’s greatness.